The widespread adoption of artificial intelligence in media outreach has made the practice noisier and less effective, according to Brett Farmiloe, founder and CEO of Featured, which owns the journalist request service HARO. In an interview on Majestic's SEO in 2026 podcast series, Farmiloe said platform data reveals a clear trend: high-volume pitching is losing ground to more thoughtful, targeted approaches.
"Less is more in 2026, in terms of being an outreach specialist," Farmiloe said. "What we've seen is that AI has made it incredibly easy to reach out to more people, and it's made it more noisy and less effective as a result." Featured operates HARO and Connectively, giving the company visibility into both the requests journalists post and the pitches sources send in response. The pattern in that data is consistent, Farmiloe noted: "The outreach that I'm seeing winning on our platforms is the folks who aren't sending out a higher volume of pitches, but they're sending out a higher quality of pitch."
Farmiloe traced the quality problem directly to the acquisition that brought HARO under Featured's ownership. "The reason why HARO ended up in our ownership in the first place was a decline of quality and trust within the system, and a lot of that was targeted through the adoption of artificial intelligence," he said. To address this, Featured chose to make AI authorship visible rather than prohibit it. "We run AI detection on every single pitch," Farmiloe explained. "We'll run a quality score on every pitch that goes through our platform - whether that's HARO, whether that's Connectively - and we'll allow journalists to see those scores. If it's 100% AI-generated, the journalists will see that. They've got a one-click filter to opt out of those pitches entirely."
Farmiloe also challenged the assumption that being first to respond is the key to success. "It's not necessarily being the first in line, but it's being at the top of the line with the best credentials and the most helpful response," he said, describing a framework built on the HARO name - helpful, authentic, relevant and on time. On measurement, he said the metrics the market reports against are shifting. "In 2026, the metrics are changing. AI visibility scores are one thing that we're seeing more and more innovators measure against," Farmiloe said. "It's really around: Is my brand visible in AI and LLMs?" He described marketers moving their metrics "towards the new front page of the internet."
Asked what practitioners should take from the conversation, Farmiloe pointed away from tactics. "The key takeaway is that you have knowledge to share, and that knowledge is highly valued by journalists and publications. Find a way to share that knowledge, and if you share your knowledge in a meaningful way, it will benefit your business."
The full episode and transcript are available at Majestic's SEO in 2026.
